10/05/2007 @ 7:00PM

The World's Oldest Billionaires

There’s new money, there’s old money, then there’s really old money. And they’re different.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than inForbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires. When we put it together last March, we found sources of wealth for the old crowd are mostly 180 degrees from those of the young turks on the list.

The old guard comes largely from blue-collar family backgrounds during an era when college was truly for the sons of privilege. They made their money incrementally, in old-line industries like oil and banking, after a young life spent toiling at odd jobs brought savvy and street smarts.

Most of the young’uns are graduate-school educated and made their piles through financial engineering or mastering the art of Internet commerce. That group, of course, includes
Google
co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, a pair of 34-year-olds with Masters degrees from Stanford University who are each worth over $18 billion.

Both are included among the 16 youngest billionaires, along with fellow former Stanford grad student Jerry Yang, 38, the chief executive at
Yahoo!
. Globally, the tech-savvy crowd of billionaires under 40 includes Chinese Internet guru William Ding, the founder of Web portal NetEase, and Indian online gambling entrepreneur Anurag Dikshit, who owns a third of the popular site PartyGaming.

Overall, seven of the 16 youngest guns hail from China, India or Russia, three of the globe’s fastest-growing economies. Meanwhile, aside from the Google and Yahoo! guys, the only American among the 16 is publishing heir Daniel Ziff, who now runs a hedge fund.

By contrast, only two of the oldest billies come from outside the U.S. or western Europe–Taiwan’s Y.C. Wang and Saleh Al Rajhi of Saudi Arabia.

And though the older generation may not have had books, they had brains. Many of them got rich in businesses that related to their early jobs.

High school dropout and native of the Midwest John Simplot (pictured above left) bought and sold hogs in his youth after moving to Idaho from Iowa at an early age. He eventually plowed the profits into the potato business, where he grew his company to a $3 billion-a-year enterprise that became the biggest supplier for
McDonald’s
french fries. Simplot, 98, is currently worth $3.2 billion.

Kirk Kerkorian was an immigrant’s son who never went to college but who parlayed his aviation experience during World War II into his own charter airline. After selling that business, he made billions in the hotel/casino industry. Ever active at age 90, Kerkorian has bought up big stakes in both Chrysler and
General Motors
in recent years, in attempt to shake up management before selling out. Kerkorian, now worth some $18 billion, placed seventh on this year’s Forbes 400.

One thing the oldest and youngest do have in common–most were self-made. Thirteen of the 16 billionaires who have hit age 90 built their fortunes themselves–the three exceptions being U.S. oil-family scion David Rockefeller, Danish shipping-company executive Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller and Saudi banker Saleh Al Rajhi. The count among the youngest billionaires: 10 of 16 did it on their own.